


Episode 79

by adarkwintersday



Series: Hide Those Ears [12]
Category: Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Episode: s03e24 Turnabout Intruder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-24
Updated: 2016-09-24
Packaged: 2018-08-17 00:55:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8124373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adarkwintersday/pseuds/adarkwintersday
Summary: ‘You can stay if you want.’It should be a simple sentence to parse.The Captain is suggesting a sexual liaison.  Spock does want.  Spock, therefore, should remain.





	1. Jim

**Author's Note:**

> Follows on pretty directly from [When he doesn't call you Captain](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7875868/chapters/18592417).

It’s very rare for Spock to come to Jim’s quarters.  Only for important, maybe even life-threatening issues.  They play chess together, from time to time, in various recreation rooms, and everything else…everything else, however intimately and inextricably they are tangled up together, however much it _isn’t_ …everything else is strictly business.

 

Spock’s only here now because Bones dragged him along.  Press-ganged him into coming, because today’s adventure was horrible, and sad, and complicated, and the doctor thinks they need to _talk about it_.

 

In Jim’s opinion they really don’t.  He’s got his own body back, and there’s not much they can do for Janice.  Leave her and Coleman on Starbase Two, and recommend, given her unhinged condition, that the Federation authorities are lenient.  And then get as far away from the pair of them as it’s possible to get.    

 

Maybe then Jim will stop feeling so sullied, and wearied, and nauseous.

 

Although somehow he doubts it.

 

Because Jim, frankly, was already a mess.  Has been a mess for weeks.  

 

The problem isn’t the sleeplessness.  He’s tired as a dog, most of the time, but he’s bullied Bones into giving him an adequate supply of stimulants.  And perhaps he’s lost his appetite, but all the whisky he’s been drinking must be providing him with basic nutrients.  (It would almost be worth asking Bones about that one, just to see the look on the doctor’s face.)  It’s not the insomnia, and it’s not the drink.  It’s not the fact that everything tastes like ash, with the exception of single malt.

 

The problem wears a blue Starfleet uniform, and is closer to the captain that anyone in the universe.  

 

And right now his presence in the captain’s quarters is making said captain want to kill himself.

 

~

 

‘Alright, enough,’ the doctor finally mutters.  ‘I need my sleep, even if some pointy-eared people I know can do without.’

Jim rubs his eyes.  ‘Of course.  Goodnight, Bones.’

 

The doctor’s gone, with a _swoosh swoosh_ of doors.  And then it’s just…

 

Spock.

 

And Jim opens his mouth, without thinking at all, and says - 

 

‘You can stay if you want. _’_

 

~

 

 _Jim just said that_.

 

And Spock says nothing back.

 

Jim is sitting at his desk, and he doesn’t look up.  But he doesn’t hear anything.  

 

Not even a _swoosh swoosh_.

 

Cautiously, he turns to the left.  Spock is standing exactly where he was last time Jim checked.  Demonstrating, breathtakingly, his remarkable gift for stillness.  Except that he has inclined his head, ever-so-slightly, to one side.  That something about his eyebrows suggests that, without conscious control, they would rise sky high.  And even though, on a normal day, Spock’s irises are almost black, Jim has the curious impression that his pupils have expanded to take up most of the space.

 

‘Spock.  I don’t.  Just listen.’

 

Stupid, when Spock hasn’t moved, hasn’t interrupted, hasn’t done _anything_ except wait, and…

 

 _Breathe_ , Jim tells himself.  He’s _thirty-five_.  He’s a _Starfleet captain_ , for christ’s sake. 

 

He’s reacting to everything he’s imagined - everything he’s feared - all his preconceptions of this moment.  Whereas all that’s standing in the room is Spock.  _His_ Spock.  Who knows him, and trusts him, and isn’t looking at him with horror, or confusion, or anything except a simple question on his face. 

 

‘Spock, we’re friends.’

‘Of course, Captain.’

‘Jim.’

‘We are friends, Jim.’

‘I don’t want to lose that.  And I don’t want to be…’

 _Oh_ _god_.

‘Jim?’

_On the table.  Too late to bluff, Jim._

‘I don’t want to be friends who fuck.’

 

Silence.

 

The word hangs there in the room.  In two and a half years, Jim thinks, with a kind of panicked amusement, he’s probably never used it in front of Spock.  His gentle, reserved First Officer, whose preferred vocabulary resembles that of a science textbook.

 

More silence.

 

‘Spock?’

‘There appear to be many things that you do not want, Jim.’

‘Am I making a mess of this?’

‘I still do not know what ‘this’ is.’

‘Don’t you?’

 

More…

 

‘ _Damn it_.’

‘ _Jim_.’

 

He hadn’t meant to close his eyes, but he opens them now to find Spock, astonishingly, on his knees before him.

 

‘Spock?’

‘I will give you anything you want.’

‘I need you to want it too.’

‘I want it too - ’

‘ _Don’t say Captain_.’

 

It feels like losing, like everything coming apart - like asking for what you want, and being handed its head on a plate, with an apple in its mouth.  And then - 

 

Then Spock reaches up, and pulls Jim down, and _kisses_ him.  

 

Kisses him, and the ship crashes into an asteroid, Earth is conquered by Klingons, the Galaxy is destroyed…

 

~

 

It’s only several days later, as the dust from these cataclysmic events is starting to settle, that Jim starts to separate out, in his mind, the things that followed.

 

How they both talked nonsense - broken, inarticulate sentences - trying, between kisses, to express all the longing and confusion of the past two years.  Trying to say everything, and hopelessly failing - to say many things, perhaps, that could never be said. 

 

How, for several hours after that, Jim was incapable of uttering anything even remotely resembling a sentence - let alone of having a coherent thought - because his body was being taken apart, with a quiet, intent ferocity, on the narrow captain’s bed.  

 

How, the following morning, he woke to find his First Officer sleeping in his arms (graceful and still as a sleeping cat, skin cool against Jim’s, heartbeat light and rapid as a hummingbird’s wings) and started to understand that - impossible, incredible though it seemed - he got to _have_ this.  

 

Not just Spock his closest friend, or Spock his insanely loyal First Officer.  Not Spock offering himself up for his captain’s pleasure.  But Spock who returned all his fierce, possessive longing.  Spock who wanted to own him, as well as belonging.  

 

Looking at the moment in retrospect, Jim allows himself, just for a while, to be overwhelmed by daft, warm, fuzzy feelings.  Because, he thinks, it was that best of all possible things - 

 

A happy beginning.


	2. Spock

‘You can stay if you want.’

 

It should be a simple sentence to parse.

 

The Captain is suggesting a sexual liaison.  Spock does want.  Spock, therefore, should remain.

 

This does not explain why his heart-rate has shot up to two hundred and ninety six beats per minute.  Still less the jumble of fragmented questions, of need and hope and desperation, all clamouring to take precedence in his mind.

 

Spock is silent because he has no idea what to say.  

 

He stands quite still because the slightest movement would probably give him away.   

 

‘Spock.  I don’t.  Just listen.’

 

The Captain’s diction is fractured.  He wishes to express something and is finding it difficult.  Spock should assist him, because Spock should always assist the Captain.

 

Spock finds himself at an utter loss to help him. 

 

‘Spock, we’re friends.’

‘Of course, Captain.’

‘Jim.’

 

Sometimes Spock calls the Captain _Jim_.  It is his privilege as a friend.  But for Spock the name has its own peculiar significance.  It is reserved for moments of intimacy, or of grave importance.  Sometimes speaking the word feels like uttering an endearment.  Sometimes, on Spock’s lips, it feels almost indecent.  

 

‘We are friends, Jim.’

 

Sometimes, when Spock says _Jim_ , it feels as if he is offering his soul to the Captain.

 

‘I don’t want to lose that.  And I don’t want to be…’

‘Jim?’

‘I don’t want to be friends who fuck.’

 

Sometimes it feels as if he is offering his soul to the Captain.  It is always astonishing to find that the Captain cannot hear him.

 

‘Spock?’

‘There appear to be many things that you do not want, Jim.’

 

A logical sentence.  Under the circumstances he is almost proud of himself.  His use of words is accurate.  The grammatical structure is adequate.   

 

‘Am I making a mess of this?’

‘I still do not know what ‘this’ is.’

 

His use of words is accurate.  And yet, perplexingly, they express nothing that he wishes to express.  Fail to convey the almost painful (three hundred and sixteen beats per minute) racing of his heart.  Fail to communicate the desperate clamour of questions in his head.    

 

‘Don’t you?’

 

Three hundred and thirty four beats per minute.  Approaching a critical level.  Spock is dangerously close to believing what he wishes to believe.  But it is not an indulgence he should allow himself.

 

And then the Captain curses, and closes his eyes, and his face speaks of desperate weariness, and utter frustration.  And at that moment Spock loses all sense of self-preservation.  

 

The Captain needs him, and nothing is more important than the Captain.  It does not matter what the Captain wants from him.  He can have Spock’s body, he can have Spock’s soul - because, in fact, they have always belonged to him.  Because there has never been any part of Spock that wasn’t the Captain’s for the asking.   

 

Spock steps forward, and falls to his knees, without thought or hesitation.

 

‘I will give you anything you want.’

‘I need you to want it too.’

‘I want it too - ’

‘ _Don’t say Captain_.’

 

Somehow the Captain has misunderstood him.  Or does not wish to take what (anything - _everything_ ) Spock is willing to give him.

 

And suddenly, _impossibly_ , Spock understands what is happening.

 

The Captain is not asking.  He i _s offering_.

 

The Captain will take Spock.  But only -  

 

(Incredibly.  _Unthinkably_.  But it is too late now, because in a dangerously rapid heartbeat he has passed from understanding to believing…)

 

The Captain will only take Spock if Spock will take the Captain.

 

The implications of this far exceed anything that Spock is capable of articulating.

 

So Spock does the only logical thing.

 

His kisses the Captain.

 

~

 

Five days and thirteen hours later the Captain tells Spock for the twenty-seventh time that he loves him.  Spock is now fully acquainted with the state of the Captain’s heart, and is continually surprised by the explosion of happiness that the repetition of this information occasions inside him.

 

When the Captain talks about about a _happy beginning_  Spock knows, rationally, that the conceit is fanciful, and frivolous.

 

There’s no excuse at all for the thought that floats into his head.

 

That _ever after_ began with a kiss.


End file.
